Moby Dick; Or, The Whale

The Women of New Bedford

The women of New Bedford bloom like their own red roses, though unlike roses, their fine carnation complexions prove perennial as seventh-heaven sunlight. Such beauty proves matchless elsewhere except perhaps in Salem, where young ladies supposedly exhale musk detectable by their sailor sweethearts miles offshore, as though approaching the odorous Moluccas rather than Puritanic sands.

第七章 The Chapel.

Ishmael describes his visit to the Whalemen’s Chapel in New Bedford on a stormy Sunday morning, where he encounters a small congregation of sailors, their wives, and widows sitting in isolated grief before marble memorial tablets honoring those lost at sea. The inscriptions, commemorating men killed by whales or lost overboard, provoke the narrator’s contemplation of mortality and the despair inherent in deaths without proper graves, yet he ultimately accepts his own fate as he prepares to embark for Nantucket.

Narrator’s Plan to Visit the Whaleman’s Chapel

The narrator recounts a Whaleman’s Chapel standing in New Bedford, a place frequented by moody fishermen shortly bound for the Indian Ocean or Pacific. He describes his intention to visit this spot, having returned from an initial morning stroll and again sallying out on this special errand before his voyage.

Journey to the Chapel Amid the Storm

The narrator describes a dramatic weather shift from clear, sunny cold to driving sleet and mist. Wrapped in a shaggy jacket of bearskin cloth, he fought his way against the stubborn storm to reach the chapel, shaking off sleet from his ice-glazed hat and jacket upon entering.